Webby Awards Celebrate Best Sites

While recent headlines have been full of dismal news about belly-up dot-coms and ever-shrinking online ad revenue, a group of enthusiastic new-media boosters gathered Wednesday night to celebrate the best of the Web at the fifth annual Webby Awards ceremony in San Francisco.

Presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, the awards honor achievement and creativity on the Web. Winners are selected by members of the academy, which includes such disparate figures as quixotic Icelandic musician Bjork and Virgin Group founder Richard Branson.

Winners in the more than 30 categories included The Onion for best humor site, Travelocity.com for commerce, National Geographic for education, and Microsoft Windows Update for best technical achievement. The Webby Award for weird pages went to Peter Pan's Home Page, the site of Randy Constan, a 47-year-old man who likes to dress as the aforementioned eternal child.

The casual and very hip ceremony, hosted by Tony Award-winning actor Alan Cumming, moved along at a quick pace because of Webby's rule that all acceptance speeches must be kept to five words or less. The acceptance speech for broadband category winner Heavy.com was this: "I've got on green socks." PBS Online, winner of best TV site, kept it highbrow with this: "Quality and substance are entertainment." The Onion was strictly business: "To advertise, call Phil Meyer." And the speech for recently defunct Print and Zines-category-winner Plastic was "bankruptcy never felt so good."

For a full list of winners, visit http://www.webbyawards.com/ main/ webby_awards/ nominees.html